Only America, not first world.

My immediate family has had 5 heart attacks, liver cancer, open heart survey, multiple eye surgeries, broken spine, a dozen broken bones, a handful of diseases and not one hospital bill.

America throws half a million families into bankruptcy every year, from medical bills. Bankruptcy.

No one in Britain, France, Canada, Germany, Italy has had that fate.

Universal healthcare is a right.

I see where this is going

fuck 'em up

I'm standing on principle here, and that principle is that medicine should not be an extractive force in society. People shouldn't be left sick or untreated because some board member needs a third yacht.

When I got my doctorate in bioethics, I naively believed that the field of medicine was filled with people who wanted to help people. And for a large percentage of actual caregivers that's true. But they have been vampire-squidded by the vulture capitalists, and I don't know how to rescue them. (For the record, I ended up in tech because at the time, it was more ethical than hospitals...oh the 80s...we were all so innocent.)

I've been doing research, which was not at all easy, because damn, they bury this stuff.

There was a Medicare change, and medical practices can now charge facility fees if they are part of a hospital.

How it was interpreted by money men was "buy every medical practice and put them under the hospital umbrella, and poof, double billing".

So, I tracked down the billing code and was able to drill down into the APC and CMS and find out what Medicare would pay U&C. (Usual and Customary)

I have to start with the national unadjusted APC payment: $134.00, Apply locality and wage index adjustments, which have to be looked up somewhere else, and the end result of 6 hours of research and math:

$133.47 Which is still absurd, but almost a third less absurd.

One of the reasons my doctor retired, and retired from the board, was because he couldn't get them to change their mind about facility fees, and scheduled his last visit for the last day they didn't charge them.

Every Dr I've talked to has said they've filed complaints with the ethics board, and yet...capitalists gonna plunder. Only guillotines can stop them, I guess.

The direct quote from the chat transcript is: "It is not unjustified. We bill for the facility charges that include the location the provider is working out of, the equipment, nursing and administration staff, supplies and everything else other than the actual care the physician provides."

So, to see a doctor in the Dallas area, you either have to avoid all the medical practices they now own, which is 85% of them in my little town, the other 15% are owned by another hospital chain, you will pay:

$300 to see a doctor and $300 to see the building. If you're uninsured, it's at least double that.

Meanwhile, the executive board of this "non-profit" organization are paid between 5 and 30 million dollars a year.